Building a Custom Front-End on Pega Launchpad DX APIs

A practical guide for building a fully custom UI — your own components, your own styling, your own framework — that talks directly to Launchpad's DX REST APIs. There is no Constellation engine, no PCore, and no Pega-rendered views here: every screen, form, and interaction is code you write, calling the DX endpoints described in the launchpad-dx-apis skill.

Use this approach when the business needs a UI that looks and behaves exactly like a provided design (screenshots, wireframes, Figma exports, a competitor app, brand guidelines) and Constellation's theming isn't enough to achieve that fidelity.

Not the right skill? If the goal is to keep Pega's own rendering (Constellation views, OOTB components, out-of-the-box landing pages) and only customize branding/theming, prefer Launchpad's built-in theming — a fully custom front-end is more effort to build and maintain. If the goal is to embed a single Pega view/flow into an existing page via the <pega-embed> web component, use the launchpad-webembed skill instead. This skill is for teams that want zero Pega-rendered UI — every pixel is custom, sourced only from DX API data.

0. Workflow (follow in order)

1. Gather requirements — tech stack/styling preferences, case types/data objects, which data views back which pages (§1).
2. Request and analyze screenshots or wireframes of the desired UI before writing any code (§2). This is what drives the component/page plan.
3. Gather Launchpad connection details and set up authentication (§3).
4. Confirm the design → DX API mapping with the user (§2.3) before scaffolding.
5. Scaffold the app: API client/service layer, then pages/components styled to match the provided designs (§4–§6).
6. Wire up actions (create case, submit assignment/case actions, attachments, followers, pulse) using If-Match/ETag correctly (§7).